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Show CHILDREN IN THE PARK. When I get soul and body weary, said Fanny Fern, I like to stroll into the parks, sit quietly down, and watch the children with their nurses. I think that I can pick out every child there who has a sensible mother. She neither exposes its little bare legs to the treacherous winds, nor puts out her baby's eyes with a dazzling white veil, or dresses her child so fine it cannot sit down on the seats. If her child is hump-backed, or lame, she does not render the poor creature's misfortune more conspicuous by a gaudy costume. If her boy has grown big enough to be ashamed of long, girlish ringlets about his shoulders, she does not insist upon sacrificing his incipient manliness to her absurd vanity. With these views, you may be sure that my list of children who are blessed with sensible mothers is rather limited than otherwise. Still it comforts me that it takes a long time for the weakest mamma to spoil a very little child; to transmute the naturalness into artificiality, and graduate lip, eye and brow in fashion's school. So I love to watch them, encumbered as their gracefulness often is with fine trappings. It is an article in my creed that a pretty child looks prettiest when plainly dressed, and that a plain one never can be made pretty by ""fuss and feathers." I saw a little girl, the other day, there, shaking her golden ringlets about under a sensible hat, and toddling before me on the gravel walk. I wanted to see the face under that hat; so I stooped down uncertain what reception I should meet and peeped under the brim. Not a drop of the clear eyes; not a blush of shyness; but instead two sweetest parted lips in the world, put trustingly up to kiss me. I'm not ashamed to say that there was a big lump in my throat and a moisture about my eyes, as I returned it, or that I looked after her till she was out of sight, and prayed heaven she might never give a kiss less purely, or where it would be no less valued. I have felt the dewy, fragrant touch of those little lips often since, though I don't know what mother's pet I blessed, nor does it matter. |
